AutoFill and Flash Fill

Sometimes you need to enter a lot of repetitive information in Excel, such as dates, and it can be really tedious.

If you think there might be an easier, automated way to do this, you'd be right.

Type the first date in the series.

Put the mouse pointer over the bottom right-hand corner of the cell until it's a black plus sign.

Click and hold the left mouse button, and drag the plus sign over the cells you want to fill.

And the series is filled in for you automatically using the AutoFill feature.

Or, say you have information in Excel that isn't formatted the way you need it to be, such as this list of names.

Going through the entire list manually to correct them is daunting.

You'd think there'd be an easier automated way to do this, too, and you'd be right again.

Type the first name the way you want it.

Start to type the next name, and, as if by magic, Excel provides a preview of the names formatted the way you want.

Press Enter, and the names are all filled in for you using the Flash Fill feature, which is new in Excel 2013.

AutoFill and Flash Fill are tremendous time savers, and they can do much more than we have covered in this introduction.

In the next videos, we'll cover them in more detail.